New Release of Data Repository

This week the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) announces the new release of the Development & Enhancements data repository: 2017R1. Over 500 projects have been added and the number of new development projects, releases and series of sprints is now over 8000. The data can be used for software project estimation, reality checks of proposals, project control, scope management, (supplier) performance measurement, benchmarking and research.

Nowadays, many organizations move from a traditional software development method to Agile and DevOps team approaches. Although these modern ways of software development are designed to deliver working software of the highest priority as fast as possible to the user, organizations using these methods often lack grip on their software development budgets.

Story point metrics work fine on the team level but are not useful for management as story points is not a defined standard and the number of points strongly differs per team. Thus, management often doesn’t know how many people should be in the teams. In addition, it’s very hard to predict at any time, what functionality should be available and at what level of quality.

The ISBSG data of completed projects, releases, and sprints, help organizations to regain their grip on application development, no matter which method used.

ISBSG data helps you to make better decisions, based on objective data instead of subjective opinions.

The 2017R1 repository can be purchased stand-alone or as part of a corporate subscription. Corporate subscribers get this release and regular updates for free a part of the value of the subscription. Other benefits of being a corporate subscriber include unlimited access to all ISBSG Special Analysis reports, a 12 month subscription to the new ISBSG Productivity Data Query tool and 10% discount on all ISBSG products and services.

Call for presentations for IT Confidence Conference

The 2017 IT Confidence and ISBSG workshop will be hosted by Gold partner China Software Process Improvement (China SPI) in September in Beijing. ISBSG is looking forward to return to China 9 years after the successful event in Nanjing (2008). The Call for Presentations and the IT Confidence 2017 website with all information regarding the event is available.

Applications Development Benchmarking

Benchmarking the Applications Development, Maintenance and Support (AD/M) Environment can potentially provide significant insights into the performance of IT processes and identify how and where they can be most effectively improved. However, many organisations initiate a Benchmarking Activity, without first fully determining the objective of the benchmark, the benefits they hope to achieve, or establishing the criteria by which projects and applications will be selected and compared.

This Workshop explores the reasons why organisations choose to benchmark. It identifies the potential benefits of benchmarking, and highlights the pitfalls of failing to appropriately plan the benchmarking activity or introduce rigor into the benchmarking process to ensure its success.

ISBSG and China SPI start a data collection and analysis partnership

ISBSG and China SPI intend to support each other in data collection and analysis. China SPI is now the official data and analysis partner of ISBSG in the greater China.

Both parties will support each other in data collection initiatives, data analysis and the publishing of new analysis reports. China SPI will also translate the current special analysis reports of ISBSG into the Chinese language.

ISBSG is confident that this partnership will result in a significant increase in available data in the existing repositories and in special analysis reports.

ISBSG starts collecting data with online questionnaires

ISBSG is facilitating its collection of data. This is assist people who want to submit data, but don’t wish to go through the lengthy data collection questionnaires on paper. Short versions of the questionnaires are now available online! If you have some project data, please submit and get a free benchmark report in return!

New repositories?!?!

ISBSG is currently investigating the creation of additional data collection questionnaires and repositories to better service the needs of the industry. We are planning to start a ‘technical metrics’ repository, where technical metrics of source code, measured with tools like Sonarqube, CAST, SIG, Omnext and others are stored in a standardized way, together with the main application characteristics. This will enable people to benchmark the results of software source code quality measurement against the industry.

Software project cost and hourly rates

Project costs can be analyzed from two perspectives: cost per function point, and cost per hour. This report analyzes the projects in the ISBSG Development and Enhancement Repository (March 2016 Release) that provide cost data, from both of those perspectives. For this report, we have focused on 732 projects in the Repository, for which the size, effort and cost data are comparable and reliable. Purchase the Software Project Costs and Hourly Rates report now.

China SPI hosts the 2017 IT Confidence Conference and ISBSG workshop

The 2017 IT Confidence and ISBSG workshop will be hosted by Gold partner China Software Process Improvement (China SPI) in September in Beijing. ISBSG is looking forward to return to China 9 years after the successful event in Nanjing (2008). The Call for Presentations and the IT Confidence 2017 website with all information regarding the event will be published soon.

Cosmic Joins ISBSG as a Bronze Partner

We are pleased to announce that the COSMIC organization joined the ISBSG as a Bronze Partner.

COSMIC is the organization that created and maintains the COSMIC functional size measurement method. COSMIC is one of the six functional size measurement methods that comply to the ISO/IEC 14143 standard for functional size measurement.

Currently the ISBSG ‘Developments & Enhancements’ repository contains about 500 projects measured in the COSMIC method and we are confident that the partnership will result in a significant increase of this number.

For more information about the COSMIC organization and the method, please visit the COSMIC website.

New Special Analysis Report: The impact of software size on productivity

In 2013, ISBSG, Capers Jones and Reifer Consultants analyzed the impact of software size on the productivity of a project. This revealed the factors that can provide economy of scale. Now ISBSG has published a follow-up report that analyzes the impact of software size on productivity based on 1139 competed projects. It turns out that there is a clear statistical correlation between project size and productivity. This is is extremely helpful for project, release and (sets of) sprints estimation or benchmarking.

This analysis report can now be purchased against a discounted price of only 29 AUD.
To purchase the report click here

Software Project Estimation and Benchmarking Made Easy:

ISBSG introduces the Online Productivity Data Query Tool (PDQ)

Today, the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) announces the introduction of the Productivity Data Query tool as a replacement for the Data portal. Now it becomes easy to select a subset of productivity, speed and quality data from the ISBSG database. Organizations that don’t wish to buy the full database in Excel can now subscribe to the online Productivity Query tool. This is very convenient if you need to do a quick estimate for a project or if you wish to check the reality value of a project proposal.

TRY IT OUT FOR 1 MONTH FREE. USE COUPON “pdq-month-trial” AT THE CHECKOUT.

The PDQ tool works as follows: In step 1 the overall dataset is selected based on a few filters:
Step 1 – Enter the filters for your project.

Then in step 2 a selection can be made on the dataset by selecting the most appropriate project attributes. The number of matches is shown, as well as the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile value for the Project delivery rate (hours per FP), the Speed of Delivery (FP per month) and the Defect Density (Defects per 1000 FP).

Step 2 – Select all the attributes to include in estimate.

Project Delivery Rate (hours/function point)

Speed of Delivery (function points/elapsed month)

Defect Density (defects per 1000 function points)

After step 2, it is possible in step 3 to make a high-level project estimate based on the dataset selected in step 1 and all the project attributes selected in step 2.

Step 3 – Enter your Function Point count and click Estimate. The projects selected for the result will contain ALL the attributes selected. Select wisely as selecting too many attributes may limit the amount of data to be included in your result.

The PDQ tool helps project managers to estimate projects, releases and/or sets of, using industry data and international standards for functional sizing. Additionally, it becomes easy to assess the reality value of software development proposals and benchmarking completed projects.

ISBSG starts collecting data with online questionnaires

ISBSG is facilitating its data submission process for people who want to submit data, but don’t wish to go through the lengthy data collection questionnaires on paper. Short versions of the questionnaires are now available online! If you have some project data, please submit and get a free benchmark report in return!

ISBSG voted in top 25 of most promising project management solution providers

Until now there were a few differences between the ‘regular’ D&E repository and the D&E repository that the corporate subscribers get as part of their corporate subscription. The main difference being the number of data fields issued in the release. Starting 2016R1 that was just released, these differences have been removed, which means that now everybody will get the full repository with all the fields that can possibly be issued. This affects all data points that are present in the repository, so also the projects that were released earlier without these fields.

Read about more about the ISBSG D&E data.

ISBSG/ICEAA SoCal co-organize the 2016 IT Confidence conference

The magazine APAC CIO Outlook has published the new list with the top 25 most promising project management solution providers. ISBSG is listed as one of these 25, as the magazine feels that ISBSG data can help many organizations in improving estimation and performance measurement processes. The publicly available data can really help organizations to make better informed decisions, reducing the risks that are usually implied in low maturity (‘expert’) project estimates and therefore saving huge amounts of money by avoiding the waste connected to failing projects. Find the digital version of this magazine here: http://bit.ly/2auH6zN

ISBSG Workshop

From September 7 until September 10, the annual ISBSG workshop was held in Los Angeles, USA. Representatives of members from all over the world discussed the ways ISBSG should operate in the ever changing world of software. One of the new services ISBSG is going to provide is an online productivity query tool, which can be used easily to estimate or benchmark a project based on size and industry data. This tool should be going live any time soon and will be announced through a separate newsletter.

IT Confidence conference

Aligned with the ISBSG workshop, the annual IT Confidence conference was organized in a coproduction with the Southern California chapter of the International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association (ICEAA: www.iceaaonline.com). In a full day conference, a lot of interesting thoughts on software cost estimation in combination with the use of parametric models and historical data were exchanged. The presentations can be downloaded here: http://isbsg.org/2016/09/12/2016-it-conference/

New Repositories?

ISBSG is currently investigating the creation of additional data collection questionnaires and repositories to better service the needs of the industry. If you have a good idea for new repositories, please let us know through repositorymanagement@isbsg.org

New report available: Software project cost and hour rates

Project costs can be analyzed from two perspectives: cost per function point, and cost per hour. This report analyzes the projects in the ISBSG Development and Enhancement Repository (March 2016 Release) that provide cost data, from both of those perspectives. For this report we have focused on 732 projects in the Repository, for which the size, effort and cost data are comparable and reliable. This report can be purchased from the ISBSG website: http://isbsg.org/reports/

Restrictions in contributing to ISBSG?

ISBSG wishes to understand what organizations restricts in submitting data to ISBSG. Could you please help us out by filling in the following short questionnaire?

ISBSG is very proud to announce the partnership with China SPI. China SPI is a not-for-profit organization in Beijing (China) that provides an ecosystem for its members to improve IT and Software best practices in China. China SPI has over 2000 members in China and wishes to improve the maturity of the Chinese market when it comes to software project estimation and benchmarking practices using functional size measurement and ISBSG industry data. ISBSG and China SPI are going to work together to translate ISBSG materials and to collect data from the Chinese industry. As part of the new partnership, ISBSG president Harold van Heeringen gave a key-note speech at the annual international conference organized by China SPI. His presentation ‘Improve Estimation maturity using Functional Size Measurement and Industry Data’ helps China SPI to improve the software estimation and benchmarking maturity practices in China.

More data fields issued in the D&E 2016 R1 Release

Until now there were a few differences between the ‘regular’ D&E repository and the D&E repository that the corporate subscribers get as part of their corporate subscription. The main difference being the number of data fields issued in the release. Starting 2016R1 that was just released, these differences have been removed, which means that now everybody will get the full repository with all the fields that can possibly be issued. This affects all data points that are present in the repository, so also the projects that were released earlier without these fields. Get your copy of the full dataset here.

ISBSG/ICEAA SoCal co-organize the 2016 IT Confidence conference

In 2013, ISBSG started to organize a one-day conference aligned with the traditional yearly workshop. The name of the conference, IT Confidence, was chosen to stress the fact that the IT industry could actually get more confidence to deliver successful projects when using mature measurement and estimating techniques and relevant historical data. Since 2013 (Rio de Janeiro), 2 additional successful events were organized: 2014 (Tokyo) and 2015 (Florence). This year, the IT Confidence is going to be organized together with the Southern Chapter of the International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association (ICEAA) in Los Angeles. ISBSG Gold member Galorath is the host of the event which is scheduled on Wednesday September 7th. Find out more about this event and the Call for Papers/Presentations on the conference website.

Software Cost Engineering is becoming an acknowledged profession!

Software Cost Engineering is a profession! However, in many organizations even large projects are estimated by just asking the engineers, architects, testers, project managers and other experts to come up with the estimate, based on their experience. In the Software Cost Engineering community, this is often referred to as ‘Estimation maturity level 0’. Although these expert estimates are sometimes quite accurate, they are also subjective, not repeatable, not backed up by data, not verifiable and therefore not defensible. The problem is that humans (experts) systematically underestimate software projects and that starting software projects with unrealistically optimistic expectations usually results in huge overruns in the end. When the customer asks on what ground the estimate is based, you really don’t wish to answer: “our engineers just think so”. The International Cost Estimation and Analysis Association (ICEAA), the International Function Point User Group (IFPUG) and the Dutch Nesma (formerly known as Netherlands Software Metrics Association) are forming a consortium to develop a Software Cost Engineering Body of Knowledge (SCEBoK) and a certification program for Certified Software Cost Engineer. Read more…

New Front Office

n order to shorten the response time for questions and orders, ISBSG has appointed a new front office and a new front office e-mail address. Please use the e-mail address frontoffice@isbsg.org for all ISBSG related questions and queries.

Are government software development projects really less productive than non-government ones?

Many people ask us if we have data of the differences between government projects and non-government projects in our repositories. A lot of people presume there are differences in productivity and are looking for data to confirm their assumptions. In fact, ISBSG collects this data and also whether the project is carried out in-house or outsourced. If you are interested in this, please check out the special analysis report Government and Non-Government Software Project Performance.

Status of the data repositories

ISBSG is currently growing two data repositories:

Development and Enhancement (D&E: projects / releases / sprints) ;

Maintenance and Support (M&S)

The number of data points in the last few releases of these repositories are displayed in the next figures:

For the D&E repository, the number of new project submissions is quite steady. Especially corporate subscribers benefit from this, as they receive an updates repository any time a new version is released. However, the M&S repository suffers from a lack of data submissions.

ISBSG is now in the process of creating new repositories and associated questionnaires as well as easier ways to submit data for people and/or organisations. If you have any thoughts on how we should improve the data collection, especially in the application maintenance & support area, please let us know: frontoffice@isbsg.org.

Interesting Statistic of this newsletter issue

A new feature of the ISBSG newsletter is the ‘interesting statistic’. In this section, a brief analysis is carried out to see the trends in productivity (hours per function point), also expressed as Project Delivery Rate (PDR) and the speed of delivery (Function points delivered per calendar month) of Java projects.

The median PDR of the completed Java projects in the repository is typically 14-16 hours/FP, but in 2013 and 2014 it dropped to under 10 hours per FP (meaning a better productivity these years), only to go up again to the usual level in 2015. The average speed is typically 22-25 Function Points per calendar month, but remarkably enough rose in 2015 to 28 hours per month. So, in 2015 the PDR got worse, but the speed went up! Possibly this effect can be explained by the increased adoption of agile development methods in the industry, where development speed is high, but there usually also is some rework after each sprint.

Corporate subscribers additional benefits – free analysis report

Being a corporate subscriber gives your organisation access to all the most current data, reports and tools. An additional benefit for corporate subscribers is the right to obtain a free report every year that is exclusively created for corporate subscribers. Even better, corporate subscribers can forward their own ideas regarding the analysis topic. If chosen, the corporate subscriber is allowed to work on the special analysis report together with ISBSG analysts. So, if you are a corporate subscriber, please let us know your ideas for the next exclusive Special Analysis Report at frontoffice@isbsg.org

Discount coupon Development &Enhancement Release 2016R1

We appreciate that you are subscribed to the ISBSG newsletter. To show our appreciation, we would like to offer you a 10% discount on the new repository 2016R1, containing 7518 data points of completed projects, which is 352 data points more than in the last release (2015R2, November 2015). Please use the coupon “2016r1 discount” at the shopping cart for Development & Enhancement Industry Data product

ISBSG/ICEAA SoCal co-organize the 2016 IT Confidence conference

In 2013, ISBSG started to organize a one-day conference aligned with the traditional yearly workshop. The name of the conference, IT Confidence, was chosen to stress the fact that the IT industry could actually get more confidence to deliver successful projects when using mature measurement and estimating techniques and relevant historical data. Since 2013 (Rio de Janeiro), 2 additional successful events were organized: 2014 (Tokyo) and 2015 (Florence). This year, the IT Confidence is going to be organized together with the Southern California Chapter of the International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association (ICEAA) in Los Angeles. ISBSG Gold member Galorath is the host of the event which is scheduled on Wednesday September 7th. Find out more about this event and the Call for Papers/Presentations on the conference website: itconfidence2016.wordpress.com